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There are plenty of businesses out there that don’t have Facebook Pages or do they?

You see regardless of whether or not you want to have a Facebook Page for your business people can easily create one simply by ‘checking in’ to your store, shopping centre or restaurant etc.

When people ‘check in’ to your business on Facebook they have the option to make a status update, tag their friends or even upload a photo. None of this can be seen on the Facebook page unless you are those people’s friends or their profile is made public, however the page will record the ‘check in’ and anything else that is made public.

To check to see if your business has a Facebook Page quickly do a search now in Facebook, I normally do the following:

Enter the full business name into the search field and click on the magnifying glass

Then down the left hand side of the page you will see ‘Search Filters,’ if you click on ‘Pages’ the search results with change. Check to see if you business is listed here.

If your business isn’t listed under the ‘Pages’ search filter click on ‘Places’

You can also try the ‘People’ option but it really should not be here, but you never know.

Then repeat this search to check for any other names people might normally call your business

If you are a large business and people regularly visit you at your premises chances are you will find that your business is listed in the ‘Places’ filter. In this example I have used Red Hill Homemaker Centre in Rockhampton. This is what the place looks like when it has been created via a ‘Facebook check in’

If you click on the Place you will see the number of people who like it and the number of people who were here. If you take a look in the top right hand corner you will see a little cog, click on this and a drop down menu will appear. Now you will see several options. If you are the business owner you can claim the place by selecting this option. Facebook will ask you to verify this and they will send you confirmation as soon as the page is yours. I have done this before many times and to Facebook’s credit they are very quick with responding to these requests.

When you receive confirmation that the page is yours from Facebook you can go ahead and use the Place/Page as a Facebook Business Page and start uploading Timeline covers, profile pics and updating the ‘About’ section. It will also show you how to make status updates and much more.

So you might be wondering why is it important to claim your Place or Page if it already exists? Why can’t I just create a new page? I believe it’s important to claim an existing page (provided it is genuinely yours) for the following reasons:

You want to have some control over the logos and information uploaded to the Facebook Page if your business name is attached to it.

You want to make sure the correct business name is being used and not a slang version.

You want to know what people are saying about your business so you can have the chance to respond openly and provide the correct information. You can do this if they post something on your wall.

You want to be able to take advantage of people checking in to your premises because if people ‘check in’ it will show up in the newsfeed of their friends. If their friends are interested they can click on the link which will take them to the Facebook Business Page with all of your details and they can either contact you, become a fan or raise awareness of your location.

If you are a business who has already created a page without checking to see if your Place already exists you may discover that people won’t be able to ‘check in’ to your place or if they do they will be checking in to a completely irrelevant site which will not provide you with any word of mouth advantages other than adding to the fan tally of that ‘other’ page set up under Places. There are ways to merge these types of pages into your current page, if you are having trouble with this please contact me. We have successfully merged several places and pages in the past.

Have you checked to see if your business has other Facebook Places/Pages?

For eight years Celina successfully worked in shopping centres owned and/or managed by Byvan/FPD Savills, Mirvac and Stockland. Now she works with retailers, small business and sub-regional shopping centres, setting up and managing their social media and marketing. Celina also teaches businesses how to make the most of their social media presence.

Why us?

• Customised social media set up
• Daily Monitoring of your social media
• Marketing Plans and Strategies
• Experienced in Shopping Centres
• Experienced in Retail
• Experienced in Small Business
• Media trained
• Experienced in stakeholder liaison

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Celina has worked with me on multiple shopping centre social media campaigns. across properties in NSW, WA, VIC and SA for Jones Lang LaSalle and Woolworths Ltd, optimising the investment from limited marketing funds and providing measurable results.